a recent issue of Spadework - Cardiganshire Horticultural Society

This work is a collaboration of Aberystwyth University IBERS,
the National Museum of Wales and the National Botanic Garden of
Wales. There were numerous questions put to Mike after his
presentation. The one that I particularly remember was ‘How do
you sex a bee?’
Tony White
NOTE Rhos pastures are flower-rich grasslands containing a mixture of
heathland and purple moor grass vegetation and providing a valuable
habitat for endangered species of wildlife such as the marsh fritillary
butterfly. Modern farming practices – including neglect, which allows
the growth of scrub – have put this habitat increasingly at risk. The term,
which ecologists now apply in other parts of Britain, derives from the
Welsh rhos, meaning ‘heath’, and this is a habitat in which Ceredigion is
well represented.
Mike explained that thanks to this collaboration Wales hopes to be the
first nation to complete the DNA barcoding of all of our species of
flowering plants – 1.143 of them – and to use this information as a basis
for further investigation into plant behaviour. It is exciting to find that
Ceredigion has played a major part in this research. The three ‘rhos’
pastures monitored in the pollinator study were Glandenys, Fullbrook
and Glyn yr Helyg – the latter two both classified among Ceredigion’s
Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).
The colourful pie-charts from the study showed considerable seasonal
variation as well as surprisingly different preferences in the tastes of
male and female bees – various Bombus species, whose similarities can
confuse even the experts. And at this point we gardeners even
encountered some actual plant names, albeit Latin ones: not all of us
could remember, for instance, that the bee-favoureded Rhinanthus is
yellow rattle and the Succisa species he mentioned is devil’s bit scabious.
[Ed.]
THE MAGIC OF ROSES
LECTURE by GARETH DAVIES on 8 FEBRUARY
All those who attended this talk must feel very much more
confident about the roses in their gardens. Gareth’s obsession with
roses started in the early 1960s, when he joined the Rhondda Rose
Society, and the Hybrid Teas have always been his favourites.
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